14.4: Cinematic Storytelling in the Role-Playing Game (RPG)

Music and the Role-Playing Game (RPG).

You may have heard of Dungeons and Dragons. Released in 1974, D&D as a role-playing game, or RPG. These "tabletop" RPGs are played around a table, and involve a fictional universe created by a "Dungeon Master" (a DM), typically in a high-fantasy/Medieval setting similar to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. These universes have castles, kings, queens, dragons, monsters, orcs, dwarves, elves, ogres—you name it. People play the game by creating a character with their own history/backstory, and take that role in a fictional universe. They adopt these roles, and converse with other characters in the game, which takes place purely in the imagination of the players. (Some like to "Live-Action Role Play, or LARP, which involves the same thing, but they actually create costumes, fake weapons, and actually act their parts in a physical location).

Dungeons and Dragons' influence on video games was immense: from the early days of the 1980s (the earliest console RPG being Atari's Dragonstomper) to modern games like Final Fantasy, Undertale, The Legend of Zelda, and Triangle Strategy, RPGs immerse players in a fantasy-like environment, and provide them with elaborate tales that take hours and hours to unfold. These games typically include a cast of protagonists and antagonists alike, and involves much narration and dialogue. In the early days of RPGs, players needed to read through the dialogue and narration, as voice acting was not technologically possible in the 80s and 90s. One of the earliest RPGs released by Nintendo was Dragon Quest released in Japan on the Nintendo NES in 1986. Watch this short clip of Dragon Quest (ported in the West as Dragon Warrior): the game begins with the main hero talking to the king providing the player with information about their fictional world and their first quest. Players then embark on their journey, meeting new characters along the way, battling their way through different quests and adventures before finally "beating the game."

As video games became more sophisticated with the advent of 16-bit technology, RPGs became much more involved: games often would take 40 or more hours to complete. They included a cast of many heroes and villains, and similar to film, these characters often would be musically represented by their own leitmotifs. These different leitmotifs would use different musical topics, including the march topic, fanfare topic, hero topic, villain topic, and religious topic. These different topics each have their own characteristics: they often use a specific set of instruments, rhythms, harmonies, and melodies, have been traditionally associated with certain aspects of human society (like heroism, tragedy, religious or political ceremony, etc.).

Watch this video that explains different musical topics in video games. You will learn how these topics are used in different themes used in video games and film, and will likely recognize many of these characteristics from your own favorite games, movies, and TV shows.

When you've finished watching this video, move on to the last page of this text that addresses Nobuo Uematsu's soundtrack to the Super Nintendo's 1994 release of Final Fantasy VI.